A New Idea

  by  Bo47 

While I was brushing my teeth this morning, this popped into my head pretty much fully formed. I wanted to get some of it down. Does it sound like something that would be fun to read?

It’s deliberately done in a very noir style, and the name of the private eye is . . . well, I’ll leave it as an exercise. :)

The subject is this guy Charming. Calls himself a prince. According to the missus—nice lady named Ella—he’s anything but. She thinks he’s a two-timing sack of soot. Hired me to follow him, find out where he goes.

Name’s Miles Maltese. I’m a private eye. In Fairy.

I was in my office finishing up the Gruff case when she walked in. First thing I noticed were her shoes. Well, okay, the second thing I noticed were her shoes. Made of glass. Very unusual. Made little tinking noises as she walked across the floor.

“Those look uncomfortable,” I said.

“Mr. Maltese?” she said, and I could tell she was about to bolt.

“Have a seat, ma’am,” I said, and I got up and helped her sit in the only other chair in my office. I sank into my chair behind my desk. “How can I help you, Miz . . . ?”

“My—My name’s Ella. Ella Charming.” She took a handkerchief out of her purse and used it to dab at her eyes. “I—I understand that you help people with, um . . . sensitive problems.”

I can kind of see a whole series of these, each one based on a different fairy tale, of which there are hundreds to choose from. :)

I’m actually pretty excited about it, which doesn’t often happen, and I’m having to force myself to actually go to work or I’d sit here all day and fiddle with this.

Originally published at WriteWright. You can comment here or there.

Hello, Hivemind? Are You There? It's Me, Kaa.

If you read my most recent post (and I know for a fact that you all hang on my every syllable, so of course you've read it), you know that I'm all a-flutter with a new idea I'm working on for a story or series of stories involving a Fairy Tale Private Eye (FTPI).

It's flowing (like buttah!) and I keep running into a problem. I kind of want these to be in the spirit of fairy tales. But noir detectives have a certain . . . patois.

They use words like 'toots' and 'dame.' Tend to leave off nouns and pronouns. Talk in fragments. Be terse.

I got all that covered. :)

What I need, though, are some words I can use for curse words. Not 'By the Black Beard of Baldur, I abjure thee!' curses, but 'stubbed-my-toe' curses. The kind of words a person says when they get up at 3 AM to use the bathroom and jam their toe into the table that clearly wasn't there when the lights were on, or when you step in something the cat coughed up en route to said bathroom at said hour.

Something . . . fairy-tale-y.

I'm having trouble with that, for some reason. I have the voice of the character (it's basically Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade) down, but . . . I need some believable curse words for him to use.

'Rats' doesn't cut it. And 'crap' seems too . . . this world. I used 'wolf bait' in this bit:

I'm the last guy in Fairy you wanna pull that load of wolf bait on.

You can probably guess which curse word it replaces.

I'm not sure I like 'wolf bait,' but it's good enough for now.

I'm not purposefully aiming these stories at a YA audience, but I am trying for the 'film noir' feel, and I don't believe they cursed much in those, either.

I'm asking for suggestions. Hit me!